Recommend a cheap yet upgradeable system?

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nigerian_businessman

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 3, 2004
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I'm looking for a cheap computer that I can recommend to a member of my family who lives across the country. Essentially, I have only a few requirements:

1. Needs an AGP or PCI express slot.
2. Needs to be modern, nothing too behind the times.
3. Needs to be under $400.

Recommendations?
 
Do you need everything? That is, do you just need a box, or do you need a monitor and peripherals, as well?

A well-constructed machine with a free slot is going to be hard to come by for that price.
 
well, it would be ideal if it could come with a monitor and peripherals. she could pick them up at walmart or something if she really needed to.

the situation is this. my mother-in-law is going back to college and needs a computer. she's totally clueless when it comes to this stuff. i would just order components off of newegg and have it sent here for me to put together, but with shipping to here and then back to CA, its a lot of wasted money. So, I'm looking to the OEM route since there's no way in hell she's putting this together on her own, and I won't be out in cali until early next year.

even $500 would be good. once it hits the $600 mark, I can put something together myself and send it to her for less. the only reason i'm really concerned about an agp slot is because my sister-in-law will be moving in with her soon and she'll probably want to play the sims 2, so if i can stick a geforce 6200 in there or something, that would be much better than intel integrated graphics or some crappy SIS chip.
 
nigerian_businessman said:
I'm looking for a cheap computer that I can recommend to a member of my family who lives across the country. Essentially, I have only a few requirements:

1. Needs an AGP or PCI express slot.
2. Needs to be modern, nothing too behind the times.
3. Needs to be under $400.

Recommendations?
Click to expand...

How can u recommend something u personally haven't even used? Especially a low end product?

A "modern" pc complete with monitor, keyboard, mouse & spkrs for $400 will be hard to find. Perhaps you'd have better luck scanning the FS forum here for a quality used home built pc with a legal OS.
 
Since you're giving this computer to a novice and you're working against a price premium, go with a Dell. You may also want to go to ABS to see if you can put something together for cheap. If YOU know what you're doing, you can put together a pretty decent box with ABS. Gateway also has some very budget-minded solutions.

General advice, if you're going to go OEM, go with one of the big dogs: Dell, Gateway, HP, ABS. No matter who you buy from, the low-end models aren't going to be put together as well or have as many bells and whistles, so go with the OEMs that have good support systems in place.
 
you could try monarch computers or cyberpower. I havn't used either but I've heard good things about them
 
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